Driving at Night

Here’s the road through fields,
across gullies, up mountains
new lovers drive to expose
their kisses to moonlight, starlight.
Public where no one can see them,
they wrap themselves in excess,
immodesty, failure of love
for the common day,
for streets laid out in a grid,
identical houses, lives
like socks in a drawer, in fists,
in hidden knots of fabric,
linen stacked in closets,
dishes cleared away.
Tables gleam like water
over depths, shadows
through windows, breath
an act of stealth
from room to room. My sister
sleeps, my parents mumble
in their sleep, my lovers
are all laughing at me, or
kissing me, or smoking
long expensive cigarettes,
our dog is dying and we
loved her, but she was never
anything more than a dog, and she
is dust with my grandfathers
and my old notebooks
and laughs that echo through
your rent-free basement
efficiency, or the city at midnight.
Now, from the overlook,
the valley stretches it’s rocky skin
further than silence. The breeze
between us. We might
be alone for good, following
riverbeds narrow and dry
so we can believe the water once flowed.
Night opens. A large bird
dips to the windshield, veers.
Night closes us in.